The last few days saw the end of the first part of my trip and the beginning of the second as my tour "Central American Adventure" is made up of 2 tours. We had a really nice group meal on the Tuesday evening- I had a Veggie Burger, first time it´s been on a menu, they sold it as "probably the best you´ll ever eat", I´d not quite go that far, but it was tasty! Also treated ourselves to dessert and had a lovely cocktail made from Coconut Lemonade which sounds odd but was really good! About half the group was leaving first thing on Wednesday morning so it was farewell to them and to our tour leader Greg, goodbye "friendly Freddos" as he always called us, no more "Ready Freddies!" as he often said!

Wednesday I had to change rooms as on the second tour I´ll no longer have the luxury of my own room (which was totally unexpected in the first place as unless you pay for your own room you come on these tours expecting to share a room) then I went for a lovely breakfast with a couple from my group. After that I went to visit the ruins of a convent called Las Capuchinas. It was interesting but it was lucky for me that someone who worked there told me some information about the place, as unfortuntely there was no info anywhere so without him telling me, I´d not really have found much out. He explained how the nuns talked to each other when they were in cells and the guide book says they had no visual contact with the outside world.
Some of us left from the "old" group had arranged to meet at 1 for lunch so despite our rather late, leisurely breakfast, it was time to eat again! We went to a lovely courtyard cafe, where I had admired the cakes the day before, but in the express counter section, not realising there was a proper cafe too. There were soooo many cakes but I didn´t end up having one, a sandwich was plenty. I went to the market to try and do some souvenir shopping, still with the dilemma of what to buy as I´ve still got to carry stuff around, but also knowing that we´ve seen things along the way. not got them and then not found them here either...I got a few presents but nothing big or heavy. We met up again just before one of the girls was due to get her shuttle out to the airport and it was goodbye time because it was then time for the welcome meeting for part 2. Met the tour leader and rest of the group, 12 plus me and one of the other girls from the first part. We went out for a meal, then it was time to pack and get to bed to get as much sleep as possible ready for the 5am departure on Thursday!

So we set off at 5am on Thursday, with a 12 hour drive ahead of us. Breakfast stop at 8, lunch stop around 2, dozed a bit, read loads and then we arrived at Flores at around 5pm. Flores is near the Mayan ruins of Tikal. It is a small island in the middle of a lake, linked to the mainland buy a short causeway. It´s a very pretty place, with small cobbled streets and various coloured houses.

Today (Friday) we visited Tikal. We set off later than I would have liked as I tend to prefer getting to ruins really early so it´s not so hot and less people. We got there about 10 and had a guided tour which lasted nearly 5 hours. It was really interesting and I enjoyed visiting the ruins, it´s a really impressive sight in a fantastic setting. It is a much larger site than Copan but doesn´t have as many carvings as Copan (where there are a lot of stelae, stone posts with carvings.) It is also located in the rainforest and has 5 massive temples that are up to 60m tall. You could climb some of the big temples, not actually on its steps, but up wooden steps, which were pretty steep! I didn´t do it, too unfit and really not sure about climbing up 60 m on a small staircase/ladder...Temple 4 was particularly steep, saw people´s photos which had great views but i settled for a photo at the bottom! It was quite a tiring day as we did quite a bit of walking and it was really hot and humid, though there was a massicve downpour in the afternoon. We didn´t have lunch til about 4 so we were all really hungry too!

Think it´ll be an early night tonight ready for our journey to Belize tomorrow.... I´ve now only got one week left of my trip!